


Let The Chaos Go

by UndomesticatedEquines



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: 1x13, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But so much angst first, Canonical Character Death, Contains Caulfield and everything that happened there, Contains Noah's end and everything that happened with that, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, POV Michael Guerin, Season 1 Canon Compliant, Sort of? - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, tagging in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:28:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29055894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndomesticatedEquines/pseuds/UndomesticatedEquines
Summary: Silence reigned inside his head. For one brilliant moment, his mother’s love had wrapped around him, filling the nooks and crannies of his broken soul with its warmth. He’d felt her love like a certainty in his bones, felt her holding the memories of his aching childhood without judgement, without pity. When she let go, he held onto it, grasping at the feeling no hands could catch. He’d fallen into Alex, who’d held him, soft and steady, and in his arms he could keep it. Could keep the feeling, the certainty, of being loved.Then she was gone. They were all gone. And there was silence.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Kudos: 26





	Let The Chaos Go

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Michael POV rewrite for the end of 1x12 and the entirety of 1x13, with one change at the end. All the horrible canonical events and deaths occur. I promise, hopeful ending.

Silence reigned inside his head. For one brilliant moment, his mother’s love had wrapped around him, filling the nooks and crannies of his broken soul with its warmth. He’d felt her love like a certainty in his bones, felt her holding the memories of his aching childhood without judgement, without pity. When she let go, he held onto it, grasping at the feeling no hands could catch. He’d fallen into Alex, who’d held him, soft and steady, and in his arms he could keep it. Could keep the feeling, the _certainty_ , of being loved.

Then she was gone. They were all gone. He stood outside the ruins of the prison, and instead of echoes of her love, he heard the screams of his dying people. All he could hear in his head, all he could _feel_ , were their cries, their fear, regret, grief, mixing with their _relief_ that their torment was over. The echoes of their deafening emotions filled him, and everything else that he was burned to make room for them.

And then there was silence.

He’d searched for silence for most of his life, desperate for the moment when the chaos calmed to clarity, the breath of understanding that came from surety of purpose. When he relaxed into living wholly in one moment, into just _being_. He’d found it in bits and pieces here and there: in strings thrumming under his fingers, in the warmth of Alex’s skin under his hands, in Isobel’s jabs and Max’s bad poetry, in his mother’s embrace. The good silences, quiet but content. He’d chased that feeling ever since, with booze, acetone, easy lays, even some beatings. Those had lowered the volume, kept the chaos from overwhelming him, but they hadn’t stopped the whirling dust storms of thoughts and emotions that dominated his mind.

This, though, this wasn’t a warm silence; it was emptiness. It was echoes of decades of pain and suffering, transferred into his mind by a process he didn’t understand.

When he listened to Isobel’s voicemail, though, it allowed for the same sort of single-minded purpose. Another one of them was dying. The screams hadn’t faded in his head; he couldn’t take more. He needed answers with a fervor spawned by anguish, filling him so the silence couldn’t erase him, so the grief couldn’t consume him. He needed—he _needed_. He needed an answer that would soothe him, that would tell him that there was still something, somewhere, where he could belong.

When they dropped him off at Max’s, he extricated himself from someone’s arms—Alex’s arms—that had wrapped around him. He felt colder the moment he did, but it didn’t register. The silence was waning, the noise somehow worse now, filled with screams and pain and _relief_. Relieved to die. He fled that relief more than anything else. He couldn’t slow, couldn’t let it in. He didn’t know what would happen when he did. But Max stopped him from saving Noah, a solid object in his path. Max’s words hit his eardrums, but they skated over his mind, blocked by his mother’s echoing sobs, by N-38’s confusion, by the moans they hadn’t realized they made.

He tasted bile and saw the gun, felt the liquid drop down his hand, broken glass shattered like the last of his control. Max flew backward, shattering glass of his own. The purpose drove him forward, shaking now, something else worming its way into his mind, but then Noah fell, and Michael’s neck was fire, and he was falling, and the echoes were fading.

Max’s warmth spread through him this time. He grasped at it like a buoy, letting Max pull him back, letting the warmth hold him safe. When he awoke, though, Max was gone, and he’d taken the warmth with him, leaving nothing but the cold and the wet stickiness on his neck and the noise. He pushed at the chaos threatening him, focusing on Max, who wouldn’t have left him unless something was wrong. Max, who would need help. Who would need him. He built a ragged wall in his mind, a safe haven surrounded by chaos, kept in it only the need to find Max. To help Max.

He took Max’s car to his trailer, needing his home, instincts shouting to hide the blood. Can’t get caught bloody. CPS will send you away from Max and Iz. You’ll have to explain Rosa’s murder. There’s no one to bail you out. His forged reflexes screamed at him with the voices of a dying people, every emotion too much to process, too much to let in, too much to keep out, too much to—Alex.

Alex. This time, the noise left for every right reason, because Alex was here. Alex was _here_ , with the set of his jaw and the determination in his eyes and he was saying everything Michael had wanted to hear for the last decade. He caught a breath, then another, and he wanted to fall into Alex’s arms, to let his embrace drive the echoes away. But even Alex couldn’t calm the chaos for long, not this time, not after everything, and it wasn’t even chaos, was it, it was grief and regret and pain, so much pain he’d drown. It whispered at him, gnawed at him, and Michael wasn’t done, he needed to help Max.

The flashes of them drove everything out for a moment, leaving panic behind to fend off the noise. He still couldn’t think, but it didn’t matter, because his body knew what to do, drawing him to his siblings. They needed him. He fled Alex before he could break, telling him tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d breathe. Tomorrow he’d fall. Today, his siblings needed him, and he couldn’t fail them, couldn’t fail his family, not now, not again.

Noah stood, eyes wide, towering over Max. Michael saw the blood falling from Max’s mouth and Noah’s glowing hand on his chest and Isobel unconscious behind him. There was no thought when he threw Noah, just a burning defense of his family.

“I’m not strong enough,” Max rasped.

Michael grabbed his shoulder, shaken by the confession.

“Hold him off, Michael,” Max lurched out of the cave.

It wasn’t a fight. Michael had been in too many fights. Too many beatings. He wasn’t a winner. He was the guy who took the hits. But Max had seemed sure, so he took as many as he could, striking back when possible, and when he woke up on the ground, he knew he’d missed time. Electricity hummed, the storm raged, and Isobel cried. Then Noah was dead but the cries of the dead dimmed, fearful of the gleam in Max’s eyes, and his hand—his hand! Max babbled about letting the past go, and he didn’t know—Max didn’t _know_ —that the past was _dead_ , they were all _dead_ , and he’d _killed_ them.

Then Max was gone and Michael held Isobel as she cried, as she took in the body of the man who should’ve loved her, who she loved. He didn’t have any warmth in him; he was broken pieces scattered in the sand, but he felt his sister’s need, and he held her. He felt her warmth, bruised as it was, and used it to hold back the storm growing in his mind.

By the time daylight arrived, he’d almost returned to some semblance of himself. Comforting Isobel had forced his storm at bay, and though he knew he was held together with rusted wire, that he’d only delayed his collapse, he could breathe again. They spoke, the way they hadn’t in years, since the secrets had torn them apart instead of fusing them together. He felt his sister come back to him, this one piece of his family he could hold tight. He heard the secrets that had claimed his bones fall from his mouth and he felt her hold them safely, and he gave that back to her as best he could.

They found Rosa. Isobel had wanted to know the man she married, and Michael wanted answers, any answers, so they’d searched. For what, neither of them knew. A piece of their ship? A journal? A picture? Instead, they’d found Rosa. Burned and autopsied and the words on her hands unfaded, taunting, and suddenly he was drowning again.

He heard Iz argue with Max. He heard Max, afire with possibility, talk about the impossible. He heard himself shout, plead, ask for time. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He couldn’t do this today. The noise needed to be let out; he’d been holding it in for too long. Isobel was grieving and she didn’t even know how much she had to grieve, because Michael hadn’t found a way to share what had happened at the prison, how much they’d lost. Max had pushed past his limits and wasn’t bowing to constructs like death, and Michael—Michael had nothing left. They needed a day. Just a day.

He should’ve known better when Max didn’t argue.

But Max had agreed, and Isobel drove him home, or he drove her home, and Michael took Max’s car again. Alone for the first time since Noah’s death, he felt his mind slip. His breathing was ragged and his hands were shaking, but he had to get _home_ , he had to get somewhere safe so he could break down, so he could let the chaos reign and take its due. His tires squealed as he turned into the Wild Pony parking lot, fingers itching for a drink, bypassing his brain. Just enough to quiet the screams, he rationalized. To banish the image of his mother, of Rosa, of the others. To soothe his sins and failures and smooth over the jagged pieces of himself. Maria almost didn’t let him in and he almost lost his mental footing, but then she did. His relief was a visceral thing and he couldn’t form the words to thank her so he kissed her, his desperate gratitude pushing through the kiss.

He saw the guitar on the stage and all thoughts of a drink vanished, replaced with the memory, the _longing_ , of the good quiet. He took it in his hands, his healed hands, pushing his feelings about the healing down, deep down, where they were in good company. His hands were awkward at first, but then the music washed over him, just like it used to.

He played for hours, minutes, days; it didn’t matter. He played until his fingers bled and his hands cramped, but the noise still filled him, so he kept going. He played until his entropy changed, until the screams faded, until he could feel the beginnings of himself, unearthed under so much pain. The clarity of purpose he’d waited for arrived, and he remembered. Alex was waiting for him. Alex was _there_ and everything that was Michael pulled in his direction, just like it always did.

The junkyard was barely organized, full of broken, discarded things like him, but Alex sat there like the eye of the storm. Alex, frowning but still waiting, still _there_ , and Michael collapsed into him, letting himself be held, letting the warmth fill him. He let go, letting Alex catch the fractured pieces of his soul and _hold_ them until he had the strength to carry them again. Until he had the strength to put himself back together again, he fell, encompassed by Alex’s arms, exactly where he belonged, and _breathed_.

**Author's Note:**

> This came from two things:   
> What if Michael heard and felt the screams and emotions of the aliens that died in Caulfield, like he heard the "screaming from far away" (it's not like he would've told anyone if he had)?   
> What if playing the guitar again calmed his mind enough to remember that Alex was the love of his life, his home, his safe space?


End file.
